As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. (Ephesians 4:1-3) As we move to Ephesians 4, all of a sudden this sweeping theology Paul has been weaving begins to take on flesh and enter into the practicalities of our lives.  We find that here in the opening verses that Paul now implores us to live out the "bond of peace" forged and preached by Christ through his cross and Spirit that we've been hearing about for the last three chapters. There is a strange paradox that arises here.  Paul urges us to "keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."  It's a paradox, because as Paul will go on to say, "there is… one Spirit."  This singular Holy Spirit is already united in and with Himself as are the people of God in whose lives this Spirit is active—so this unity Paul urges us toward is already there.  It's a gift.  So what's to keep?  Yet, on the other end of the paradox we discover that the people who claim this self-same Spirit of Christ are often divided, living in dis-unity.   Unity with the whole church of Christ is a gift we have nothing to do but receive from the Spirit as He joins us to the reality of "peace" Christ has worked, and yet this unity with the whole church of Christ is also a goal we must strive to keep in all our Christian lives and living.  Unity is a gift and a goal.  Paul wrote this challenging line from prison.  A place of being set apart, divided from the rest of the church.  There is therefore, a sense of urgency to receive and live and not take for granted or squander this good gift of God in Christ.  Paul urges us all to live worthily of the calling we have received.   Far from striving to heights of success, which often includes puffing up our own pride and resume through competing and outshining others, the calling we have received includes a call to walk the humble, gentle, patient, loving path of Christ and his cross instead.  This slow, lowly, and unspectacular path of Jesus is the means of living out our calling to keep what we already have and to remain what we already are: united to Christ and one another through the Spirit by the will of the Father. We've been adopted into this family by the grace of God, the work of Christ, and the power of the Spirit.   But as with any family: it takes some humility, love, and patience to remain united as a family.  We don't always get along so well.  We annoy each other, disagree with one another, hurt each other, and take from one another.  Our families can wound us more deeply than most any others, because we are so much closer to them. Those collected wounds and annoyances can drive wedges that eventually blow families apart in divorce and estrangement.  But, they are also places where the Spirit can quietly break down the barriers of hostility and forge a redeeming peace that unites us again, despite ourselves.     This is the work of Christ's cross in our lives.  It is the work we are called and urged to join.  We are continually called to reconcile with one another, confess to one another, and forgive one another.  This is the slow, humble, gentle, loving work of keeping the unity of the Spirit-joined family in the bonds of Christ's peace.  It is the hardest work of our Christian lives.  But we do not do it alone.  Unity is not just a goal, it is also the Spirit's persistently worked gift as he unfailingly unites us ever deeper to Christ.   May we seek and find just such a reconciled unity as we gather around the family dinner table, the Lord's Table, once again this Sunday.  

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